Tuesday, 21 March 2017

An article based on part of my up-coming talk at IATEFL in Glasgow, How To Cheat At English, Wednesday 5th April 17.55 – 18.25 (Carron 2). The other part of the talk is about exam preparation and technique.

What is
considered correct English changes over time. These days, using ‘fewer’ with
plural nouns is comparatively rare; most people use ‘less’, as they do with
uncountable nouns. They say (and write) ‘less time’ and‘less students’. Is this a grammatical error?
That depends on your definitions. It is certainly a change in usage but it creates no confusion or ambiguity. And if we accept (as we
should) that grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive, a revision to the
grammar books to allow less with
countable nouns is only a matter of time. Today, all English speakers -
including the writers of grammar books - accept the formulation 'It's me', even
though in the past it was considered less grammatically correct than 'It is I'
(because the copular verb be requires
a subject, not object, pronoun). People who dig their heels in over fewer are fighting a losing battle, just
as the advocates of 'It is I' were.

Many of the
changes in usage that evolve over time are simplifications and relaxations of
grammatical rules. So why are they so rarely presented to people learning
English as a foreign language? Not having to stop and think mid-speech whether
the noun they are about to use is plural or uncountable would surely boost
fluency. Why should learners have to fret over grammatical distinctions which
the majority of native speakers no longer bother with?

There are
other examples of grammatical 'relaxations' that would help learners of English
express themselves more freely. When using there
is/are and some/any with nouns,
students have to mentally calculate a complex matrix of choices: affirmative or
negative? countable or uncountable? singular or plural? Every choice represents
a likely hesitation and a potential error. In short, the more choices you have
to make, the less fluent you are likely to be. So why not capitalise on the
fact that, in modern English, it is perfectly acceptable to use there's, the traditionally singular
form, with plural nouns? As far as some
and any are concerned, you can usually
omit the quantifier in the affirmative and use no in the negative. This leads to the following rationalisation of
choices:

There’s an art
gallery.an art gallery.

There’s some
traffic.There’straffic.

There are some
shops.shops.

There isn’t a cinema.cinema.

There isn’t any
pollution. There’s
no pollution.

There aren’t any trees.trees.

Whether I
would actually encourage students to use there’s
with a plural noun would depend on who they were and why they were learning
English, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility, at least for speaking activities at lower levels. Of course, there are contexts in which the concept of countability can't easily be ducked: when asking How much …? or How many …? for example. But I would suggest that most learners spend more time answering questions than asking them. A less contentious way to
simplify the grammatical load for language learners is to avoid overlap. Having
multiple ways of expressing the same idea is of limited value to learners at
lower levels. That kind of enrichment belongs to a more advanced mastery of the
language. And yet materials writers and teachers seem obsessed with teaching
fine distinctions rather than pragmatic generalisations, and with telling students what they can't do with the language rather than what they can do. A typical ELT course,
at pre-intermediate level, deals with the future tense by contrasting will and going to. It gives the impression that, if the contrast were
represented by a Venn diagram, it would look something like this.

In fact, a more accurate representation of will vs going to when talking about the future would be this:

There are
lots of contexts in which you cannot naturally use will to talk about the future and very few in which you cannot naturally
use going to. There are quite a few
contexts in which you can use either will
or going to, but we can disregard this.
Why have two ways of saying the same thing when you're still a relative
beginner? In other words, forget will
when talking about the future; just use going
to. You are going to be right nearly all of the time. Use will (or more accurately, use I'll) for specific functions like
offering and promising, not as a general-purpose future tense. Dwelling on the
tiny part of the will circle in our
diagram that lies outside the much wider going
to circle is perverse and unhelpful, but many books and teachers do it.

The same
principle can be applied to other areas of grammar. Do away with unnecessary
choices, especially while speaking, and you unclog the mind and allow it to
worry about more important things, like expressing an interesting idea. For
this reason, I would advise students who have a comparatively low level of
English, when doing speaking activities, to:

• ignore the distinction between have to and must for
obligation – use have to all the
time.

• forget reported speech and its accompanying changes of
tense – just quote the words.

• stop deliberating between the present perfect and past
simple for recently completed actions - use the past simple, even with adverbs
like just and already, as Americans often do anyway.

And so on.
There are many other corners that can be cut – with a few important caveats.
These simplifications must already exist in everyday spoken English; learners
are not at liberty to invent their own. Higher level learners will want and need to use the full range of forms so that they can choose the most appropriate for any particular context. And of course, care should be taken in exam situations.

Having said that, the value
of cutting corners is clear: increased fluency. There are many other
ways in which books and teachers can, and do, help with fluency. But expressing
yourself orally in a foreign language is such a difficult task that it is
surely best to do away with any unnecessary drag on your performance. You might elicit the occasional wince or grimace from pedants who
regard themselves as custodians of the English language. But to be honest, who
cares? Not I.